The Endless Order of Things
by pagination
Summary: A crossover between The Endless of Sandman and the detectives of the Major Case Squad.
1. Delirium and Goren

**_Standard disclaimer:_** _The Law & Order universe and its characters belong to Dick Wolf and NBC. The Endless and its characters belong to Neil Gaiman and DC Comics._

_**Author's Note:** It is an odd concept. I am aware! I was just curious to know if I could do it without losing the reality-based atmosphere of the L&O universe. As usual, feedback and constructive criticism more than welcome._

* * *

**_Delirium_**

Lately, Bobby is finding it too easy to slip between personalities, to don mind after mind like an actor sliding into costume. He has a catalog of them stored in his imagination, characters lined up like suits on a dresser's rack. Some are his own creation, and those are old friends, but others have lodged themselves indelibly in his skin, detritus from investigations when to crawl into another man's mind meant letting it crawl into his.

He wonders sometimes which one is real, if one day he'll shrug into another personality and then find himself trapped, unable to leave. He imagines himself watching the world through alien eyes, no longer able to distinguish between his thoughts and another's, and wonders if part of him will be aware and howling in the dark, or if by some mercy madness will be gentle and kind, erasing even the memory of sanity until he is left in oblivion.

On the good days, it frightens him, and he clenches his fingers tight on the slippery strings of self.

On the bad days, like today, he can't make himself care.

He walks down the alley with latex on his hands, searching for eyes and ears before the first canvass corrupts them. It smells of stale urine and staler beer, of late nights spent too far from home. Sweat mingles freely with fetid, sweet decay; the cardboard boxes piled high near the dumpster bear traces of food and other, less savory things. The sounds of patrolmen wax and wane behind him, voices melting together in the miracle of concrete acoustics. Eames's voice supersedes them, one more layer over strata of echoes. She is instructing them, she is berating them, she is winding their keys up to make them move. He could almost feel sorry for them. Echo was cursed, once upon a time. The thought pleases his notion of symmetry.

A mongrel dog steps out of shadow and stops to stare at him with dark, cynical eyes. Somewhere in its past was a nobler breed, a German Shepherd strain still proud enough to stamp its offspring. Its descendant regards a Major Case Squad detective with skepticism, contrasting his appearance against his backdrop and finding him odd.

Bobby drops to his haunches and watches the dog. Its coat is healthy; its weight is good. "Hey there, buddy," he greets in an overflow of affability. "Who do you belong to?"

The dog tips its head and considers, judging, he thinks, the quality of his voice. It is street-wise, for all the care some master has given it. When he stretches his hand towards it, it eyes him with scorn. There are few animals so capable of communication as a dog. If it had the power of speech, it could not say more clearly, _Are you kidding me?_

His hand drops back to his knee. "You're right," he says. "I apologize."

The dog sits down and returns to staring, only slightly appeased.

Bobby rises to his feet and ambles further down the alley, the animal's watchful gaze like a knuckle digging into his skin. "I'm looking for a witness," he explains. "There was a shooting back that way, last night." He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, gesturing through bricks and mortar down two blocks, where policemen swarm like insects over an indifferent corpse.

The dog's eyes flicker, following the motion. It yawns slowly and with great relish, showing a long, pink tongue lolling in a cage of yellow teeth.

"It may not matter to you," Bobby says, "but it mattered to him."

The dog blinks, licks its nose, then raises a hind leg to scratch busily behind its ear.

"Thank you," Bobby says gravely. "I'll carry on, then." And he turns his attention outward.

The piles of cardboard run along the entire wall of the alley, some collapsed for later claiming, others simply stacked one on top of the other like a child's building blocks. Something catches his eye, a white stripe against the darkness. He takes a step closer, and is paused by the hair-raising thrum of a growl.

The dog is on its feet again, legs stiff, head lowering. The pointed ears flatten close to the skull. Bobby pauses, then slowly raises his hands. Memory pieces together the jigsaw of his brief glance: an arm stretched out against the concrete, slender and delicate, fine, pale skin smudged by patches of filth. "I just want to look," he tells the animal, his voice pitched low and quiet. Soothing. "I won't hurt her."

The dog's head lowers further; the bushy tail curls under the hind legs. The tremor of its growl threads higher, sharper. Bobby slides his near foot further, gravel hissing under the hard sole. "I just want to look," he says again. "Your friend might be hurt. She might need my help. I'm just going to look," he says, and bends a little to stretch his arm towards the girl's.

The growl cuts off. The dog straightens, looking disgusted that its bluff has been called, and ventures a few steps closer to investigate. It is tacit permission, if grudging. Goren drops to his haunches again and lifts cardboard away from the body underneath.

She is young, but not too young; small, but not too small. The tangled hair is filthy, bubblegum pink under tangles and clinging debris. A single lock of it curls bright yellow across the high brow. He pushes away the last flat board ("Samuel Adams," it proclaims in stylized letters. "Boston Lager") to find shiny eyes regarding him, one green, one blue. Their colors are so bright, they burn.

"I know you," she announces in a child's voice. "You're one of _my_ fishies." The draped arm lifts to wiggle fingers at his head. "Hello, fishies."

Her features are delicate, crafted out of porcelain. She has a doll's beauty, as seen through a malformed glass: just shy of perfect, just shy of right. The personality in the eyes is too brilliant to be sane. (When did he start thinking that sanity was dull?)

He bends to one side to meet her gaze, forcing aside depression to offer a smile as a greeting. "Hello," he says gently. "I'm Bobby. What's your name?"

"I have names." She rolls across concrete like a little hedgehog, curling up and unfolding to undulate against the wall. The slim arms wave, contorting into a knot behind her head. "They're wiggly things like coats and ties and you put them on and take them off and then, um, they're naked and you're all gone. There's a word I forget that means you. Do you know it?"

"I might," Bobby says. "Do you want to come out and look for it?" He pushes away another piece of cardboard and extends his hand to the girl as he did to the dog, coaxing her to approach, to touch another human being. The dog sits down beside him and watches with interest, a spectator at a play of dubious quality.

She is luminous against the shadows. Saints must look so, beholding the face of God. "I had a brother," she says wistfully. "He looked like you but he was red, and Barnabas ate from his fingers. He was there when everything went all strange and I don't remember but I was different then, different, different, all different, wasn't I?"

"Maybe you were," he says, and leaves his hand open, waiting. "I don't remember. Is Barnabas your brother?"

She stretches over the cardboard barrier to slide her fingers into his. They flutter in his grasp, impermanent as smoke. "Barnabas is a dog," she informs. "You have hands like paper. Are they bloody? Oh. Hello, Barnabas. He's cross but I mustn't say why. He looks after me, or I look after him, or we look after each other when one of us is lost."

The dog glowers, but his tail thumps once against the ground.

"You take good care of him," Bobby says, and draws her towards him. "He's--" He glances at the dog, which glances warily back. "He looks healthy. And happy." Reckless, he stretches his free hand towards Barnabas and spites the mongrel's dignity to fondle his head.

Barnabas glares -- _If I weren't on my best behavior, copper,_ -- but submits with ill grace. A mordant wisp of humor touches Bobby: the conversation that is sane, he is having with a dog. The conversation he understands, he is having with an insane woman.

She curls at his feet and twines her fingers with his. Her clothes are as haphazard as her eyes, a collage of thrift store acquisitions over torn fishnet stockings. "There are people in your head," she says, and lets her head fall to one side in a reflection of his. "Their necks are broken and they all cry. Don't cry, little people."

Her hand reaches for his face, perhaps to pat it. He intercepts it on its path. His hand engulfs hers. "Were you here last night?" he asks. "Did you sleep, here?"

Those astonishing eyes open wide, like little stars. "I was looking for my brother, but he went away. He's someone else now," she says.

She smells of sweat and old leather. The scent steals into his imagination, setting it spinning into random association. "Was it dark? When you looked for him. Was it night?"

"I was lost," she says, "but Barnabas found me. Barnabas is a _good_ doggie. Hello, Barnabas." She squirms away and wriggles towards the dog. The mongrel endures her exuberant hug with far more patience than he tolerated patting, though he turns a flat stare at Bobby, daring him to comment. _Not one word._

Alex has sometimes looked at him like that.

"Did we find my brother?" she asks. Barnabas allows her to peer in his ears. "Are you there, big brother?" she whispers.

The dog sighs.

Bobby watches her romp with the long-suffering mongrel, and feels a hand close around his throat. She is ephemeral and free, heart-stoppingly fragile; there is a familiarity about her that he refuses to acknowledge.

Her forehead is marked by a smudge of dirt. The skin around it almost glows, it is so white by comparison. "You have a--" he begins, and points at his head before indicating hers. "On your face." She peers at him with owlish, mismatched eyes, then stares upward, engaging to see through the obstruction of her skull. He reaches into his pocket for his handkerchief and dampens it with his tongue before gesturing at her. "I can clean it for you," he says. "If you like."

She does not move away, so he wipes the filth away for her, tenderly, carefully, aware of the hummingbird warmth of her, febrile even through the gloves. She regards him from underneath the fabric, interested and oblivious at once.

"What's your brother's name?" he asks in a quiet voice, while she is compliant under his hands. "Maybe I could help you find him. We could find him. Together."

"You can't find him if you _look_ for him," she says kindly. "He's like me. Daniel Daniel Dream Del Del is me."

"Daniel is your brother's name?"

"Daniel," she echoes.

"And your name." He rubs away a spot beside her mouth. He tickles her ear. She blinks. "You're-- Del?" he asks.

"Del Del Deli Del Del," she chants, and her smile is radiant, unshadowed by care.

He smiles back down at her, conscious of the protective impulse, the inevitable yearning towards the damaged and the broken. "Del," he says. "That's a pretty name. Hello, Del."

"Hello, Bobby," she says.

"Were you here last night, Del?"

"Barnabas says my sister was here," Del says, and screws up her face in ferocious thought. "I didn't see her. I was far, far, far away."

"Your sister," he says. "Did your sister see something last night?"

"My sister says we know everything, only some of us have forgotten except, um, she doesn't forget things. I know a word, it's a gunky word, like tears and water and gushy things." She inhales and holds her breath, cheeks puffing out.

"Where is your sister now?"

"Guess my word," Del demands. "It's a word for the thing that's, um, in your eye except it's not tears, but it's like water, except it isn't. It's 'vitreous humours.' Guess. Guess. Oh," she adds, crestfallen, and tangles her fingers into a knot before her face. "I guessed my word."

He tips his head further, searching for the gaze under the barrier of her hands. One blue eye peers at him. He draws the green one out of hiding with his look. "Could I talk to her?" he asks gently. "Your sister. Can you show me where she is?"

Del regards him with pity. "Silly," she says, and topples backward, her arms thrown akimbo.

He looks down at her and his chest aches. For her or for himself: the one unleashed and buoyant in her liberty; the other clenched tight and fraying at the edges. He looks at a possible future and not for the first time, feels the seduction of freedom, wonders what it would be like to relax that hold and let the floodgates open. Imagines himself someone else, no longer Bobby Goren, escaping confines and responsibility and expectation to be simply his mother's son.

From the near side of sanity, Del is a bird with a broken wing. From the far side of sanity, she is endless and beautiful. It hurts to watch her.

She scrambles up while he is thinking, and thrusts her face at his before he can dodge. Her forehead touches his; her fingers cradle his face. Her breath is sweet and heady, like old wine, like flowers and wild things. "Don't be sad, Bobby," she says, and the tenderness is his mother's, dusky warm and nostalgic. "It doesn't hurt, sometimes it hurts, it won't, it won't hurt."

Something slices through his heart, a blade so fine it parts the flesh without drawing blood. He wraps his hands around hers again and draws them away from his cheeks. His skin feels as though it's been bathed in ice. "I'm sorry," he says, and his tongue stumbles over the words. He isn't sure what he's apologizing for. "There are people, Del. People who can help you. We can look for your brother and your sister together, but there are people. We can find you a place to sleep, something to eat. You and Barnabas."

He wants her to say yes. (He wants her to say no.) She watches him with her patchwork eyes and they are too wise and too kind for him to bear. She pities him. "You're not one of my fishies," she says sadly, and leans forward, balancing on her hands to kiss him on the cheek. The touch of her lips burns his skin. "Bye-bye, Bobby."

She unfolds like a marionette, disjointed angles tugged by strings. Barnabas rises and shakes himself. One last glance at Bobby bids farewell -- _You and me both, brother_ -- and then the dog steps to take his place by Del's side. He fits there. He belongs.

She spins away, feather-light and bouncing on the breeze.

Bobby watches them go, his own eyes blind and filled with color. The grace of it steals his breath. It would be so easy to let go. It would be so easy. He could open his hands and let the strings fall free, let the careful stitching of his life come unraveled and undone.

_It would be so easy._

Time stutters and stops.

Inhales--

"You find something?"

--and exhales.

Alex's voice. The alleyway is empty save for them. He starts, jerked back to the present, and finds her beside him, looking down at him.

"What?" she asks, and regards him quizzically. "Is there something on my face?" Her fingers touch her nose, checking. Her eyes are wise and wry, bright with her own, pragmatic intelligence. (Why did he ever think that sanity could be dull?)

"Nothing," he says, and feels the world slide back into its moorings. She is solid and present, reality carved out in three dimensions at his side. She fits there. She belongs. Gratitude bubbles like delight through his veins. "I didn't find anything."

"That's got to be a first," she says. "Are you sick?"

"I'm fine," he says, and stands. "Everything's fine."


	2. Despair and Eames

**_Standard Disclaimer: _**_The Law & Order universe and its characters belong to Dick Wolf and NBC. The Endless and its characters belong to Neil Gaiman and DC Comics._

_**Warning:** Contains spoilers for the 6th season episode, Blind Spot.__  
_

_**Author's Note:** I was going to let this chapter sit and then rewrite it at a later date, but this turns out not to be compatible with my OCD, so I am posting as is so I can move on with my life and concentrate on other things. Sometimes you kick the dog, and sometimes the dog kicks you. So to speak. As usual, feedback and constructive criticism welcome._

* * *

**_Despair_**

Someone is hammering a spike through her head.

Vertigo grabs and yanks her feet from under her. It dimly registers that she is upright, but she can't make herself care. Pain. Her world is pain.

There are noises somewhere, like someone is choking. It doesn't matter.

Awareness slips away.

* * *

There are screams. Someone is screaming. 

Her arms are cold and on fire at once, as though they've been drenched in ice water and gasoline. Her jaw aches. Her mouth is too dry to swallow. Her head still pounds, but it is not quite as painful as it is before. She tries to open her eyes, and feels her eyelashes scrape against something. Random synapses collide, and spin dizzyingly. A word emerges: blindfold. She is blindfolded.

It confuses her. Her head hurts. She opens her mouth to ask someone to turn down the volume down, but there is something in her mouth and this is important, somehow, but she can't remember why, can't quite care--

She tastes bile on the back of her tongue. She pushes it down. She tries to lift her head. Agony stabs through it.

Consciousness opens the floor beneath her and drops her into oblivion.

* * *

Her arms ache, her ribs ache, her back aches, her head aches -- _Concussion_, a cool, dispassionate part of her diagnoses -- but the noise is worse. The sounds. The screams. It is endless, endless: crying, choking, whining, whimpering. Sounds that go on and on without sense, without reason. 

Sometimes they falter, sometimes they stutter to a halting, gasping pause, but then they start again, stealing her breath and drilling into her mind. Even the fog of apathy cannot stand long against those sounds. It begins to tatter under the onslaught, shredding with each fresh, bubbling gasp and whimper. Panic lives on the other side of indifference.

She clutches the numbness to her, muffling her senses with it to deny their reality. She feels detached from her body. Lighter than air. Numbness is dispassion; dispassion is room to think. (It hurts to think. Ignore it. Ignore it.)

They learn tricks for memory, on the way from the Academy to the gold shield. They learn on the beat how to lead the witness to recollection. How to shorthand notes into a story. How to ask the right questions to get the right answers. Enough to fill a report, at least. Who, what, where, when, how. Interrogation, real interrogation, comes later. The art of reading someone is more than an afternoon seminar interrupted by a boxed lunch and coffee.

If Bobby were here, it would be distractions and slight of hand, questions about things in the past interspersed with questions about the present. Watch the eyes, to see how they work: which way they twitch when memory is retrieved; which way they go when lies are created. She plays the straight man to his comic, asking the direct questions while he teases out their tells and leads their attention astray, like a man taunting kittens with a feather on a string.

His way is not better. It is only different. Sometimes the shortest distance between A and B is a straight line.

_"What's the last thing you remember?"_

Car drive. Radio. Dougie's tricycle on the street -- veer to avoid that. Park. Bag out of the trunk. Keys--

_"What were you thinking?"_

...Shoes. New shoes.

_"What made you think of shoes?"_

Mail-- junk mail. Sale on shoes. Looking at the mail, which meant inside the house already. You never let yourself be distracted when you're opening the door. That's when you're vulnerable, when your attention isn't on your surroundings. Always pay attention when you're opening your doors.

That's where she was attacked. Inside the house, where she felt safe, on her own turf.

The empty birdcage bobs through memory, that split-second between distraction and realization that something was wrong. Pain hiccups through her head again. Stars pinwheel nauseatingly across the black. Fear leers at her through the thinning veil of indifference, its face distending and stretching the fabric.

_"Where are you now?"_

Air needles her skin. Dust clogs her nose (blood, piss, sweat, fear, pain and something familiar, something masculine that she has smelled before--)

_"Where are you now?"_

Something squeaks in the background, metal chafing without lubrication, like the chirp of rats. Someplace cold. Someplace that echoes. Uncovered walls, thick, likely with no windows. Hard floor.

_"Where are you now?"_

The sounds that ricochet around her lack the hollowness of true space. The room is not too small, but neither is it too large. A storeroom, or a basement.

Echoes of screaming. Screaming.

God, the screaming.

_"Help me,"_ she says into the silence of her mind. Numbness is slipping through her fingers.

She gets no reply.

* * *

Understanding bumps at the corners of her mind, lurking just out of sight behind the nausea that comes from thinking too hard. She moves too slow to catch a glimpse (or doesn't want to, same difference) so she lets herself not care; lets herself go slack on whatever it is that holds her up. She dozes fitfully through the pain, fading in and out of consciousness, and waits for it to come. She is used to waiting. 

When it comes at last, it comes as a blow out of the dark. It crushes her under its weight, and with it comes a fear that annihilates and rends, robbing her of air and hope and life and wit.

Sebastian has her.

For a moment, she is thankful for the gag.

Her heartbeat and breathing quicken, chasing the panic so hard she's afraid her chest will explode. Adrenaline careens through her. Someone is dying. She is a cop and someone is crying and suddenly all she can think is, _Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop,_ because if it stops -- if those screams stop altogether and do not start again -- it will be her turn.

Terror claws and scrabbles, frantic.

Don't stop. Don't stop. Don't stop.

It doesn't stop.

* * *

Time stretches, endless and merciless. 

Sebastian's time.

He takes it.

* * *

They learn, as cops, to fight the urge to blame the victim. It is a hard lesson to learn. It is human to despise the weak; to ally yourself with the strong, who are untouchable. Cops are by nature people who act, not people who are acted upon. The dogs that guard the flock are only one step removed from the wolves that hunt it. Dog and wolf are both predators, circling prey. They have more akin with each other than with the sheep. 

She hates that person screaming in the dark.

In the blackest part of her, the shamed and shaming heart of her, she hates that other woman for being weak. Hates her for being there. Hates her for being a victim. Hates her for her noise, her stupidity in being caught, her inability to be strong under Sebastian's knife. Hates her for being someone she can't help.

Hates her most of all for the inevitability of a death that will make it her turn next. _Shut up and die,_ she demands, even while she orders, _Live. Live. Live._ Because one more scream is one more second for her, one more moment to exist and breathe. She thinks, to cover that savage, roiling desperation, _If you survive, someone will come for us_. And underneath that, a mean, ugly little voice whispers _If you survive, it won't be my turn yet._

One more scream. One more second of another woman's agony, in exchange for another second of her own life. One endless, eternal, tormented life, measured in the heartbeat panicking under in her throat, in the rasp of breath that stabs her with fresh pain.

Fear stinks. It has a smell, a presence in the room like the beating of great, putrid wings. It fills her lungs and chokes her. This is not how she is meant to die. Her skin prickles, damp with sweat. She shivers and swears it's from the cold, not from panic.

Vertigo spins her again. Self-contempt blocks her throat. _"I'm sorry,"_ she says to that other victim. _"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."_ She is shaken with a pity that's almost like grief.

_Liar,_ Despair chides, and squeezes her heart between fat fingers.

* * *

The cloth in her mouth keeps triggering her gag reflex. It worries her. If she chokes on it, if she breathes it in-- 

_An easier death than Sebastian will give you,_ a silent voice whispers.

She rebels against it, and wrestles with her tongue to push her gag against her teeth. The relief she feels at accomplishment is disproportionate to the deed.

_That was foolish._

_"Fuck you,"_ she answers, and that other voice falls silent. For the moment.

She wrestles with possibilities, and sees all futures leading to torture and degrading death. Time stretches and frays, full of holes. Her pulse is no counter to measure it by. She pictures the report they will write when they find her body. Pictures how her partner's will bow over the keyboard.

Bobby. It is almost enough to make her cry. She can feel the prickle of tears (ridiculous) start under her eyes, and blinks hard against her blindfold to refuse them. He moves through the shadows of terror like a warm light, and breaks her heart in two.

Bobby will come for her. Her partner will save her. The thought spins out of hopelessness like a rope and she clings to it, wrapping it around herself out of need and desperation.

_He does not know that you are missing,_ the voice says. _How will he find you?_

_"He'll come."_

_How?_

_"He'll come."_ She squeezes tight and forces away doubt. Forces away reason, too wracked to risk facing it. _"I'll last until he comes."_

Her silent companion says nothing. It has no need to. Logic won't be unseated for long. For now, her head aches, and that will hold reality at bay for a time. If she concentrates on the pain, she won't have to think about how unlikely rescue is. She won't have to think about Bobby staring at recordings, hands empty of answers, lucid and dreaming on the apron strings of a lunatic.

* * *

She has thought about dying. She has thought about the statistics regarding cops and mortality. Statistically, it is not likely that she will die on the job. She has never expected to die on duty. The possibility of being invalided out or injured in the line has always loomed larger. She has thought about those statistics, too. 

Most cops go their entire careers without once firing their guns on the job. She is no longer among their numbers. Most cops go their entire lives without once taking a life.

She is no longer among their numbers, either.

She tells herself that if she has thought about that, about being one of the unlucky few who have fired and killed, it is mostly to remind herself that she was justified and that they were both good shoots. (_Liar,_ the voice says.) She is not the first to fill the walk-on role in a suicide-by-cop. The attendant guilt has to be less than Logan's. At least she has never killed one of her own.

_There is a great deal of similarity between the thought processes of policemen and the thought processes of criminals,_ the voice says.

Variations on a theme is how they get them to confess. Measure the smaller evil against the greater, and criminals will unburden themselves to a receptive ear. "I may have shot that clerk, but I ain't no _junkie._" "I killed my girlfriend's kid, yeah, but I'm not a _pedophile_."

_"Shut up,"_ she says.

Guilt fondles Justice under the table. Roads not taken. Shots not fired. If she'd paid more attention when she'd walked in that door. If she'd realized more quickly that someone was there. If she hadn't come to a predator's notice by gunning down two perps.

If she wasn't Robert Goren's partner.

She is exhausted by _what if_. _"Bullshit,"_ she says, and tries to believe it.

* * *

Fear is tiring. After a while, she forgets to feel it. She hangs from her restraints, wrung dry. There is no energy left to be afraid. 

Little things. Little things begin to nag her. The feeling of fabric sticking to her skin. The twist of her underwear where it digs into her hip. The tickle of a hair that has become plastered to her nose. Eventually, it won't matter. Eventually, Sebastian will make it meaningless.

In the meantime, an itch in her lower back is close to driving her crazy.

Death looms, horrible and degrading, but discomfort is the bigger bitch.

* * *

Eternity passes. Reality stretches thin, transparent enough to see the future. The screaming begins to change pitch, going higher, thinner. The pauses are longer now; the voice is no longer human, but animal (the words she could almost hear, bubbling, wet shapes of vowels under the whine of dying are gone, long gone) and there is nothing there, no mind, no will, nothing but the screaming and the pain and the screaming and the pain and the screaming and the pain... 

...And then it stops.

She is frantic for a moment; thinks she has lost her hearing as well. Her lungs rattle. Her chest constricts too tightly for her to draw in an easy breath. For an instant, the silence throbs in her ears, made out of cotton and thick, scratchy wool. And then it clears.

No. No. Once more. Scream once more. Live. Live. Live.

Please.

Silence answers.

She was wrong about fear. She can still feel it, after all.

Next victim.

_Your turn._

* * *

There are other sounds, sounds she has been trying not to hear: ugly, wet, thick sounds, like scissors cutting uncured leather, like raw meat being tenderized. Her memory supplies more detail than she needs, bringing back the bodies they have already seen. Her imagination puts her face on each of them, and paints her partner crouching beside them with his fingers on their flesh. Bobby will touch those open wounds next; will rub the blood between gloved fingers. 

Cops tell stories about the connection between partners. They are the stuff of legend, revered like tales of marriages that have outlived the ages. An unraveling, giddy part of her wonders if Bobby will be able to sense her association through the dead woman's body. Perhaps he'll sniff at it. "I smell Eames."

She clamps down hard on hysterical laughter. The gag helps.

She stretches on her tiptoes, her muscles burning as though coals have replaced them, and gasps for air. Behind her, a curtain rattles on its pole. She can hear the rustle of movement: one body in motion, dragging a weight from one place to the next; the scrape and tear of tarp.

Something opens -- a draft of air washes across her, drawing out a fresh, sharp shudder -- and then closes.

And now she is alone.

_What will you do now?_ the voice asks. It is distantly curious.

_"Whatever it takes,"_ she says grimly back.

* * *

She can't feel her fingers anymore, but if she moves them, she can find them, like phantoms of themselves. Metal bruises their tips. She grips hard and stretches, pushing her weight off her wrists. Something wet trickles down her arm. Even through the numbness, she can feel where skin is rubbing off. 

Her fingers manage to trace the shape of what is holding her: identify it as a loop of thick metal, rounded and smooth. She turns, to see what give she has, and finds if she raises herself onto her tiptoes again, metal will squeal and turn with her.

Lefties loosies, righties tighties. She rotates once, fully, then holds her breath and listens for reaction.

Nothing.

_He is disposing of the body,_ her silent companion says. _He will arrange it someplace where it will be found. Someplace conspicuous, so that his murders will gain attention. And now he has you, so he will not need to risk himself by looking for a new victim._

She turns again, carefully, listening to the squeak, struggling to find some hint in the sound that something is happening beyond the friction of a metal joint in a metal socket.

_Your partner will be called in to examine the body. He will wonder where you are, but he is a man of duty, so he will make some attempts to contact you, then continue with his work. It will take a day or two for them to realize that you are missing. He will go by your house and find everything as you left it. If you are fortunate, perhaps he will find signs where Sebastian broke in._

She imagines that. She imagines Bobby noticing her absence, because her absence throws him off-kilter, as though gravity has reversed itself and the sun has learned to travel east. She imagines Bobby noticing her absence, and then going about his routine, worried still but concentrated until the mystery on his desk eats what is still free to wonder.

She imagines him at her funeral, because they will find her body. Sebastian will see to that. It will be a closed-casket funeral. Sebastian will see to that, too. Ross will pull him off her case, because the last victim was his partner -- too close for any cop to keep a clear head, and Bobby gets too involved, too close. It won't matter. Bobby will continue hunting her killer, because it is Bobby, and it is Sebastian, and it is _her_ 6 feet under with an honor guard to fold the flag. She sees him matched through another partner -- who? Logan, perhaps, now that Barek is gone? (and a part of her laughs drunkenly at the thought: Bobby and Logan partnered together, a nuclear holocaust of a nursery tale. She can almost -- almost -- feel sorry for Ross if that happens; Ross, who wanted _her_ to keep _Bobby_ under control, senior detective _my ass_)

She will be reduced to a file, a case number and a statistic. An object lesson for future rookies: never let down your guard. Even without the uniform, cops can still be targets. Already she feels herself diminished by it, flattened into two dimensions.

_Life will carry on without you,_ the voice says. _Eventually, people forget the victims._

Except for Bobby, who will not forget, because he is Bobby and the edge of brilliance he wields like a scalpel comes with a cost to stability. The pursuit will become an obsession. He will spin out of control without her to frame his world, unraveling strand by strand until he is Declan Gage -- he is already so close: the breadth of a mirror away -- continuing down the path he began before her time.

And she blames him. Blames him for being safe. Blames him for not having her back when she needed him to be there. Blames him for being Robert Goren, who moves like a silver fish through the puzzle that will kill her. Blames him most of all for becoming someone who will fail her, at the end.

Knowing it is irrational, knowing it is wrong: still she blames. There is an endless supply of blame, almost enough to equal the supply of despair. It is sweet, in its way. It drives out the fear. She is filled by it, shaken by it, steadied by it.

She turns.

_This is foolish._

And turns.

_There is no hope of escape._

And turns.

* * *

There are sounds somewhere, over the squeak of the metal. She stops turning (can't tell if she's facing the way she started, panics again, if he sees, if he sees-- but the light was slanting this way under the blindfold, yes, just turn a little more, like so and then stop, stop, did he hear?) 

He is in the room, then. She can hear the door's whine as it opens; can feel the push of air as it floods in with him. She listens to each step and wonders in a strange, calm corner of her mind how many times this has played out before. How many victims have opened their eyes in the dark and counted the footsteps to their bed, their closet, their hiding place, hoping against hope that if they pretend to be asleep, if they pretend to be gone, if they pretend to be invisible, those footsteps will move on?

She has held those victims. She has spoken rote sympathy and asked her questions and moved coolly and efficiently through the process of justice for them. But not of survival. That has always been someone else's task. One white card -- _"Victim Services is waiting just outside to talk to you,"_ -- and a referral before she can move gratefully on to the answers that are waiting.

The irony is so thick, she could suffocate on its dregs. She counts footsteps and feels hollow, as though despair has carved out her insides and left her empty, light enough to float.

_No hope,_ the voice whispers, and it sounds replete. Peaceful. Something slithers in the dark. _This is where it ends._

Something inside shrivels and dies. Some wall of defiance crumbles and falls. No hope...

Her phone rings.

It almost stops her heart.

Even suspended between heaven and the grave, she automatically reaches for it. Muscle memory is thwarted by restraints and metal. Someone is looking for her. Someone misses her. _Too late._ Not too late.

The phone rings. Gloved fingers slide under the gag around her face and pulls it down. Dry lips crack. Air chokes her, fresh and sharp. The taste of old blood is metallic and thick on her tongue. She gasps for breath. It is possible to be grateful, even now, even for this. The phone rings.

Cold metal touches her cheek.

She does not need to see it to know what it is. She is familiar with its work. Terror blooms like a flower in her mind. The world goes white and red. All of it, all of her, every sense and thought and function she has focuses on that sharp tip digging into her skin, following its trail down her face. _No hope. No hope. No hope._

He wants her to scream.

No.

She swallows it, almost chokes on it, feels it sink like a boulder into her stomach and push out against her ribs, too big for her body to contain -- but she can't close her mouth, can't keep it from yawning, aching, gaping, stretching, opening wide around the sound her mind is making for it, a sound that will rip through walls and doors and hurtle across miles to where Bobby sits, Bobby, Bobby, where are you come quick Bobby come quick I need you because I don't know how strong I am I don't know how strong I can be help me Bobby I need you help me help me _help me_--

Despair sighs in her ears. _Victim,_ it says. Metal slides across her skin. Not hard enough to draw blood. Hard enough to promise pain. She can feel his frustration. Selfish. Academic.

Her breathing is ragged and broken, each inhalation like swallowing broken glass. Anticipation is worse than the first cut. She will not give him the satisfaction of speaking, but the words beat a frenzy against her teeth, a soundless shriek. _"Do it, you fucking son-of-a-bitch."_ And under it, a child's whimper, _"Daddy--"_

Metal digs in. She closes her eyes...

...And then, suddenly, the blade is gone. Sebastian is gone.

He is gone, and she lives.

She _lives_.

* * *

Urgency pushes her now, biting sharp, razor-edged chunks out of her heart. Sweat makes the darkness under the blindfold hot and humid. Her skin is slippery under the cloth. She rubs her head against her arm and feels the blindfold just begin to give. It's not much, but it's a start. Her pulse rattles in her throat. Hope is a hardy little spark, once lit. It pushes her to rub again, to rub again until the blindfold has been dislodged and dim light burns her eyes. 

To be able to see is almost like freedom.

The room is small and cold, cluttered and empty at the same time. It looks utilitarian, like an apartment building's cellar. She expected a torture chamber: stains on the floor, knives and scissors hanging from the walls, tools for human suffering laid out for easy convenience. It shouldn't surprise her, that evil should look so banal, but it does. In spite of all experience, some childish part of her still expects evil to look like evil, still wishes for the body to reflect the soul.

She looks up. Blood trails down her arms, where duct tape has dug too deep into her flesh. The metal that hangs her proves to be a hook. The open end of it is too high for her to pull her wrists over. If she had any breath to spare, she would almost use some for a laugh. Sebastian has a flair for accessorizing. A butcher's hook for his next butchery.

She balances herself on her tiptoes, sends up a panting prayer, and turns.

_What do you hope to accomplish?_ the voice asks.

She turns.

_You are a victim,_ it says. _It is not your responsibility to escape._

And turns.

_This effort is meaningless._

For an eternity, she turns. The strain on her legs' stretch up is less than it was (is it? She hopes, she hopes, measuring the gap between life and death in millimeters.)

When the hook gives at last, she almost doesn't survive it. It pops out of its joint with sudden violence, smashing hard into the concrete floor even as she is sent sprawling. Her legs have forgotten how to bear all her weight. The sound of her arms released from their stretch is a scream; it blazes hot through her eyes, finding an outlet where her throat refuses it passage. The jog to her head makes her stomach heave. She retches once, then bites it back, hard, and tastes blood in her mouth.

Time, stretched like elastic through the long, black night, snaps back and recoils. There is none left now. No time. No time to think. No time to be afraid. No time for triumph.

She curls for a moment, blinded by the blood singing again through forgotten pathways. The floor bruises her shoulder, but it is only one more minor pain in a conflagration of greater ones. No time. No time to feel frantic. No time to revisit terror. She uses her teeth on the restraints around her wrists, barely tasting the glue that mingles with sweat and blood on the tape. The dryness of her mouth gives way to a gush of saliva. Her heart and her lungs expand like new animals being born, clawing at her rib cage to crawl out into the day.

There is still tape left around her wrists, but the maddening certainty of Sebastian's return brings her to her feet. Rescue first. Escape second. There is a curtain half-draped along a wall. She checks behind it and finds a table streaked with blood. It's empty. No time for regret. The door has a push-button lock. The door's handle bruises her hands. Through the sudden roar of blood in her ears, she becomes dimly aware that she is pounding the metal with her firsts. She forces herself to stop. No time for rage.

Some part of her mind riots, mining genius out of nothing. Through the jumble of dizziness (boxes of cables, boxes of wire) and the stink of her own stale terror (light bulb means power) she scrambles through the room (insulated conductor) piecing together an escape through the locked door and (a stray synapse fires and laughs and laughs at old childhood games, thank you MacGyver and Richard Dean Anderson) this is how Bobby lives. This is how Bobby exists, layer on layer on layer, seeing everything with a god's perfect vision, from galaxy to microbe.

The door explodes. When she blinks, the insides of her eyelids look like stars colliding.

She takes the hook with her and runs down a hallway lined with furniture. A door at the end of the hall opens to her grab. There is a brick wall on the other side. It stops her for a second -- doors lead to exits; harried anger pushes at her chest -- but there is no time for it to matter. She dismisses it in a heartbeat and moves on. Despair slithers after her, jaws wide and hungry. She runs just ahead of it, racing to the finish line.

_Mine,_ it whispers, and moves fast. She can feel its breath at her heels. She speeds through the maze of passages, sensing Sebastian behind every shadow, waiting around every corner. Another door. She slaps it open and finds herself in another room. Sees a window, holes of light like teeth at the top of a high wall. She heads for it before she can think, forgetting gravity until she is staring up at it from below. It is a very high wall. Reality smashes into her from behind. Her stomach lurches into her throat. Her breath leaves her in a sob.

_Trapped,_ the voice says at her back. Fangs sink into her foot.

No.

_It is too high. Victims do not escape._

No.

And _no. _

The sick rumble of nausea is an acceptable trade for pride. Cop. She is a cop. She wraps herself around with her badge: recreates the weight of her gun at her hip and the dig of cuffs at her lower back. Checks herself in the mirror of her imagination and sees the armor and the absoluteness of authority.

She is not a victim. She is a cop.

A _cop._

There are shelves in the wall. There are rough patches where desperate fingers can grasp, if they are determined enough. She reaches for the lowest one through a blur of pain, mind burning with the promise of freedom. Her limbs are heavy. Her body is heavier. The hook sinks in deep; she almost expects to see blood pour out of the wall.

_It is too high,_ the voice says.

_"Fuck you."_ She drags at the end of the hook, pulling herself up by its line. Her arms tremble visibly. She can feel the muscles failing her.

_Your arms are too weak._

Painted stone is cool under her hands. Her foot scrapes onto the ledge. Slips. Fingers scrabble and recover. Almost there.

_There is no hope._

On the ledge now. The wall stretches up above her. It looks endless. She digs her fingers in, feels a nail crack, and _pulls._ Almost there.

_It is too far._

_"Fuck you,"_ she chants in silence, and makes it her mantra. Exults in it. Pulls by it. Drags herself up by it, inch by bloody inch. _"Fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyou--"_ Almost there. Fresh air touches her face. Almost there. The smell of exhaust and something green and growing drifts by her. Black spots bloom at the edges of her vision.

Almost there.

_You will fall._

Almost there.

_You will fail.  
_

Almost there.

_No--_

She reaches for the light.

_--hope._


	3. Desire and Logan

**_Standard disclaimer:_** _The Law & Order universe and its characters belong to Dick Wolf and NBC. The Endless and its characters belong to Neil Gaiman and DC Comics.  
_

_**Author's Note:** This is not the Desire who moves people towards the fleshy pelvis-bumping. This is the Desire that is, for more than one reason, the twin of Despair.__ As usual, feedback and constructive criticism more than welcome._

* * *

_**Desire**_

The boy is 8 years old and whippet-thin, all pale skin and smoky eyes over sullen, animal endurance. He spends his days and some of his evenings on the apartment building's stoop, hugging his ribs through his jacket. The neighbors eye him askance. "Such a quiet boy," Mrs. Tucci says, shaking her head. "You have to watch that kind. My brother's boy, Frank, he was just like that."

"Troublemaker. Always getting in fights," her friend Mrs. Paolini says, eager to be the outside witness. "It's a disgrace."

"He didn't get it from our side of the family," Mrs. Tucci says, unheeding, producing as proof the pictures of her own son in the dress uniform of the Marines. Back on the subject of the phantom on their apartment stoop, she adds, "The way that boy looks at you, like he's half-starved."

"His parents try," Mrs. Paolini says. "They're proper churchgoers. Such a nice young couple. And his _father_."

"Such a nice man," Mrs. Tucci says. "And so handsome in his uniform."

The women exchange appreciative glances. They're not so old that they can't appreciate when God puts a little zing into His work.

The girl moves into the next building on a cold March day. The movers are Mexican, too bored by the business to crack a smile. The boy sits on the stairs and studies the furniture as it disembarks from the truck, making an exercise from the distraction, another excuse not to go home. One large bed. Two small dressers. A toy chest painted yellow and green. His new neighbors disembark from a battered Pontiac: a girl a little bit younger than him, dressed in a green wool coat; a man his Pop's age who could break bricks with his bare hands. The father swings his daughter into his arms when they cross the street, as though jealous that the earth will touch those small feet.

She catches sight of the boy and watches him watching her, turning her head to track him as they go up the stairs to their new home. Her eyes are tawny and sharp, cat-like and framed in black lashes. He waits a while longer, to see if she'll come out again, but she doesn't. All too soon, the street lights go on, and it's too dark to see the sky. He goes inside. "Someone new moved in next door," he tells his mother.

She is a soiled dishrag crumpled across the sofa, and doesn't hear. He pulls a blanket over her and eats stale toast and peanut butter for dinner.

The new neighbors barely emerge from their apartment over the next few days, though he watches for them when he can. Once or twice he sees the father leave in the car; the daughter he sees only once, a glimpse caught out of the corner of his eye. Her father has her firmly by the hand, guarding her from imaginary traffic with a ferocity that she seems to take for granted.

It is a week before he finally meets her. He sits on the front steps, hugging his ribs again, experimenting with his seat to find one that will not hurt. She steps out onto her front step and looks over the low wall at him. Ten seconds later, she is leaning against his legs, a small, pink dessert in an explosion of skirts and frills.

"What are you looking at?" she asks.

"Nothing," he says, and looks at her. Even without the brightness of her clothes, she is hard not to notice.

"I'm Desirée," she says, and smiles at him with a closed, rosebud mouth. Her hands grip his lap, sharing heat through his jeans.

"I'm Mike," he says, and adds, "Logan," because his last name is his father's. He doesn't wince at the way her weight hurts him, because he's not a baby, and she's just a girl.

She bumps her stomach against his knees. "Mike Logan." The way she says his name is sweet and soft, like she's eaten too much sugar. She tips her head to one side, the way his mother does sometimes when she wants something from Pop. "We're neighbors now."

"I saw you move in," he says, and watches her warily. "Was that your Dad?"

She turns a little, hiding her face in clouds of black hair, and glances sidelong through it at him. A little pink ribbon winks above her ear. "Yes," she says. "That was my Daddy."

Her voice is sing-song, like a playground chant. There is something in it that makes him think she is laughing at him. "Where's your Mom?" he asks.

"I don't have one."

"Where is she?"

"She went away." Desirée nibbles on a fingernail while Mike imagines a life without a mother. "It's just me and Daddy now," she says.

A pang goes through him. "Is she dead?" he asks, too loud.

Desirée shrugs, as though bored by the subject.

"I bet she's dead. Or she ran away."

"Mothers don't run away."

"Sometimes they do." Mike's friends have mothers who have left. Sometimes he pities them. "They run away and then they have a divorce, and they go to hell."

Desirée shrugs again. Hell does not frighten her.

"Don't you care if your Mom goes to hell?" he asks.

"No."

"If your Mom and Dad had a divorce, your Dad will go to hell, too."

She turns her white, even teeth to her hair instead, and stares at him with those shiny eyes, as if she's thinking about putting him in her mouth as well.

"You'll go to hell, too," he lies, inventing dogma on the spot. "If your parents get divorced, you go to hell. You burn forever and Satan stabs your feet with a pitchfork. I'm not going to hell, because my parents are still married."

The prospect does not appear to interest her. She leans on him like he's a piece of furniture, there for her use. Her hair tickles his nose. He draws back. "My daddy's a cook," she says. "He works in a restaurant."

"Mine's a cop," Mike says, trying not to boast. "That's better than a cook." (He doesn't try too hard.)

She looks up at him. "I've seen him." She pushes off of his support and then bumps back into it again. Bump. Bump. Bump. Pain sticks white and sharp needles through Mike's bones. He grits his teeth.

"Cops are important," he says. "They arrest bad guys and throw them in jail. Your Dad only cooks food."

Her eyes narrow, considering.

"I bet it's not even good food," Mike says.

She will not be provoked. The bumping stops, much to his relief; she twirls a new piece of hair through her fingers and nibbles on its end. "It's only your daddy," she says. "It's not _you_."

"Sometimes I go with him."

"To arrest bad guys?" Her scorn is light, but bites nonetheless.

He has the upper hand in knowledge, and regards her with pity. "No, stupid. To the station house. He takes me and I hang out there. I know all the cops."

Her face is thoughtful. "I bet you couldn't tell a bad guy from a good guy," she says.

"Bet I could."

"Bet you couldn't."

"Bet I could. I'm going to be a cop someday," he announces, and closes his hands into fists, his heart pounding a little faster.

This silences her. She puts her hand on his leg and bounces a little, thinking. "You'll take care of me," she says.

He thinks about standing, but it hurts too much to think about for long. "No I won't."

"Yes you will." There is a smugness in her voice. She leans across his lap to reach for his head, and ignores his first flinch back to curl a strand of hair around a finger. "Cops have to take care of people. And boys like girls."

"No they don't."

"Do too."

"Do not."

"You will someday," she argues.

"No I won't," he tells her, scrounging up an argument to trump all arguments. "Girls are gross."

She considers this with a skeptical air, unconvinced by the sincerity of his belief. "You're not in school," she says at last, shifting ground. "Why aren't you?"

"Why aren't you?" he counters.

She balances her arm on his shoulder to slide her fingers through his hair. Seen close up, her skin is pale as smoke, as smooth as paper. "You're a boy and I'm a girl." Her eyelashes sweep down, long and black. Through them, her eyes glitter like polished coins. "You have to do what I want."

He is confused and fascinated. And then, when her other hand slides up his thigh as though it belongs to her, revolted. He recoils and releases his ribs long enough to slap her hand away, hard. "Don't touch me," he says. His breath comes quick.

"Boys like to be touched," she says, as though it is a secret that everyone knows but him, and pouts.

His knuckles itch. He stares past her at the street, listening to the loud thud of his pulse. "Go away."

She steps up another stair and dips towards him. Her breath smells like summer peaches, warm and close and sweet. "Baby girl knows what Daddy wants," she whispers in his ear.

Something burning and heavy roils in his chest, and then he is standing and looking down at her sprawled on the sidewalk with her hand pressed to her cheek. His knuckles burn and blackness licks with forked tongues at his vision, and he knows, he knows he will be in trouble when Pop hears about it but over the guilt of knowing he's done wrong, but there's a wild, heady satisfaction that makes his head spin and almost entirely drowns out the warning of retribution to come. "_Go away._"

Her eyes are wide and startled. She sits up. Her shadow wavers under her. "You hit me," she says in wonder.

He shakes a little where he stands, his hands groping after fists and then opening again. Something too large for his body to contain stretches his skin. Pain shreds him. "Go away!" he shouts at her. "Leave me alone!"

"Make me," she says, and her smile is like broken glass.

He stares at her, imagining her face all battered and bloody while he pounds it in with his fists. It makes his heart beat faster and faster and he wants, oh, he wants--

She stands up and stares at him. His mother is inside; Desirée is outside.

He goes inside.

Pop finds out two days later, when he is taking out the garbage and one of the neighbors encounters him on the sidewalk. Mike watches from the window; he does not need to be able to hear in order to translate their conversation. "Saw your boy hitting that new girl," Mrs. Tucci says, shaking her head. "Kids nowadays. They play so rough."

"Hitting the new girl?" Pop asks. "My boy Mikey?"

"Sweet little thing, that girl. So well-behaved. I told your boy, I told him, he should take some lessons from his daddy. He's a proper man, a police officer."

"I'll take care of it, Mrs. Tucci," Pop says, his mouth thinning. "My boy shouldn't be hitting the girls. Don't you worry. I'll talk to him."

He comes home and cuffs Mike across the ear. "Boys don't hit girls," he says, while Mike is still trying to find his feet again, still blinking back tears from the sting. The old man's disapproval is a roar over the echo in his head. "No matter what. You never hit a girl. You go over there and apologize."

"No, sir," he says, and earns another slap across the head. He sees it coming and manages to brace himself before it lands. He only wobbles a little bit, this time. It is a victory of sorts.

"You talking back to me, Mikey?"

"No, sir."

"Why'd you hit her?" Pop asks.

Mike looks down at his feet and feels his ears burn. He mumbles and is thumped again, lightly.

"Speak up, boy."

"She wouldn't stop touching me," he says loudly. His face is hot with embarrassment.

Pop looks surprised, then amused. "You hit her because she was flirting with you?"

There is something bemused about Pop's grin. Mike smolders with the unfairness of it. "I didn't want her to."

The old man laughs suddenly, his displeasure forgotten, and wraps his arm around his shoulders. Mike's heart expands until it crushes his lungs. Pop says, "One of these days you'll want her to, Mikey."

"No, sir," Mike says.

"Believe you me," Pop says, and squeezes. Mike is made to understand that he has made his father proud, though he doesn't know why. He doesn't question it. Adults are unpredictable. "You're gonna grow up to be a real man, so help me God. Apologize to the girl. No matter how much they piss you off, son, you don't lay a finger on them. Real men take care of women. You understand me?"

"Yes, sir," Mike says, and is relieved that his voice doesn't shake.

Pop chuckles. "Good boy," he says, and lets him go. "Where are my keys?"

Mike helps him get ready: goes to the bedroom to get his hat; digs out his keys from his other jacket. He doesn't dare ask if he can go to work with him. If he is helpful, Pop may ask him anyway.

His father sits on a kitchen chair to tie his shoelaces, still chuckling. "8 years old and already he's got girls after him," he says.

"I don't want girls after me," Mike says. He grips Pop's keys with both hands, tight, willing his father to notice how badly he wants to go with him.

Pop puts on his hat and picks up his holster. Mike watches him buckle it on, yearning for the invitation. "That's what you think now," Pop says. He grins. "One of these days, you'll be a cop just like your old man, and all the girls will be chasing you. You'll be a heartbreaker, boy."

"I don't want to break hearts."

"Trust me, Mikey," Pop says, and laughs again. "You treat a girl right, she'll treat you right, and you'll be the happiest guy on God's green earth."

"Like you and Mom," Mike says, reckless with desperation, and Pop looks at him, looks at him hard, before walking out the door without another word.

Mike goes to the window to watch him go, pressing himself against the glass in case his father looks up and sees him. He holds his breath. If he holds it to the count of fifty, Pop will look up at the window and yell, "Come on down to the precinct with me, Mike! We need someone to show the rookies how it's done!" And then Mike will snatch his coat and run downstairs, to spend a glorious afternoon surrounded by men in blue uniforms: men who will teach him how to fight dirty, how to recognize when a perp is lying, how to unhook a bra with one hand. How to be a man. "Jesus fucking Christ," Pop will say, catching Officer Kirk teaching him how to cheat at cards. "The wrong monkeys are wearing the uniforms in this zoo."

He counts to thirty. Pop gets in the car.

He counts to forty. The engine rumbles to life.

He counts to fifty.

Pop does not look up.

Mike lets his breath out in a gust that fogs the window. He scrubs it away with a hasty hand and watches the car head off down the street, feeling smaller and smaller the further it gets. It has barely turned the corner before his mother is there beside him, her eyes shiny and full of hunger. "Is your Daddy gone, honey?" she asks.

"Yes, ma'am," he says.

She wraps herself around him and ruffles his head with tender fingers. "We can spend some time together, just you and me," she says. "Would you like that?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Go run an errand for me first," she says, and gives him green bills, pressed and flat from Pop's wallet. "Mama's run out of her medicine. Go get some for her, sweetheart."

"Yes, ma'am."

She kisses him on the temple, then kisses him on the cheek and on the nose and on the mouth. Her lips are sweet. She teases the hair away from his scalp. "You have such curly hair," she says. "You got that from me."

He looks at her. "Your hair's not curly," he says.

"It used to be," she says, and laughs, curling a strand of it around a finger like Desirée did. "When I was younger and prettier. Do you think I'm still pretty, Mikey?" she asks, and there's a brittle edge to her voice that he recognizes.

"You're beautiful, Mama," he says, because he has learned things, at 8 years old. "Everybody says so."

Her face softens. "You sweet-talker, you," she says, and hugs his head. For a moment his entire world is the close, dark warmth of her breasts and the cotton of her blouse. He closes his eyes and inhales the smell of her. His heart pounds a little faster, a little harder, like it's trying to burrow its way out of his chest and make its way to her.

She releases him. "Now, scoot," she orders, and slaps him on the rear hard enough for it to sting. "No dawdling. I'll start making cookies while you're out. How does chocolate chip sound to you?"

He puts on his shoes and his jacket, listening while she sings to herself in the kitchen. The liquor store is two blocks away, straight down the stairs, turn right and then go straight, look both ways when you're crossing the street. They greet him by name and hand him a bottle without asking for his order. He drags his feet on the way back, looking for distractions that will delay his return, but the sidewalks are mostly empty, and the one neighbor he sees only stops long enough to say hello before hurrying on with her dog.

His mother is watching for him from their apartment window. Once he comes into her view, he has no more excuses. He goes up the stairs, slapping each concrete step with his feet to punish them, and keys himself into the building.

She falls asleep six hours later, sprawled across the sofa that will be her bed for the rest of the night.

He waits in the closet until he is certain she is down.

It takes a long time to move out of the dark. The light stabs his eyes when he opens the door. He has to crawl at first, inching his way across the floor until he can grow accustomed to his limbs again. He needs a wall to pull himself up to his feet. He clings to it with stiff fingers, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Most of the cuts have stopped bleeding.

She has vomited on the sofa cushions. He stares at her, the blood thudding unpleasantly in his ears. He thinks for a long time before turning her head to the side so she won't choke. Her blouse has crept up over her stomach; he pulls it down to cover her, and draws a blanket over her so she won't get cold.

Her rosary dangles from one of her hands. He leaves it where it is.

He goes to his room on slow and clumsy feet, avoiding a direct glance in the hallway mirror as he passes. He doesn't need to see to know how he looks. It takes a long time to change out of his clothes; he shoves a sock in his mouth to keep himself from whimpering, and has to stop twice to rest. There is blood on his shirt and pants. He will need to do the laundry tonight.

It hurts to swallow. When he tips his chin back, he can feel the pull of skin where her fingers dug into his throat. He wraps a scarf around his neck; he can dip his face in it to hide his split lip, if someone sees him.

The afternoon is only half over, but it is already cold outside. He takes the steps one at a time -- down his, up hers -- his hand on the railing, and lets himself rest on each one before taking the next. He is stymied at the entrance by the fact that he does not know what Desirée's last name is, but one of the names in the slips next to the mailbox numbers is written in fresh, black ink. He makes a note of the apartment number, and is grateful that it is on the first floor.

It is the first apartment in the hallway. He can hear a television through the door. It opens at his knock, pulled back a crack that stops dead when it meets the length of the security chain. Desirée peers at him from inside. She smiles when she sees him. "Hi, Mike," she says. "You came to see me." Her smile dies away when she takes in his face.

"Pop sent me over," Mike says. It is the first sound he's made in hours. His split lip cracks with motion and he can taste blood in his mouth again, salty and thick. His voice sounds fuzzy, like he's just woken up.

"Who's at the door, honey?" a man asks inside the apartment. Her father appears behind Desirée, running possessive fingers through her hair before dropping his hand on her shoulder. He regards Mike through the doorway and frowns. "Making friends already?" His voice is hard and hostile.

"Do you want to come in?" Desirée asks, and then flinches.

"I'm supposed to apologize," Mike says.

"For what?" Desirée's father asks.

Desirée looks at Mike's bruised eye. Mike looks at her father's hand on her shoulder, with its white knuckles. He remembers that she doesn't have a mother.

"I'm not sorry," he says clearly, and turns away to head back down the hall, his back straight, his steps even. He can feel her watching him go, so he makes himself walk as though he doesn't feel a thing, biting down so hard on tears that it makes it teeth groan.

He doesn't see Pop until the next morning. Mike limps into the kitchen to find the old man already there, eating toast and reading the newspaper. Pop looks up as he enters and then looks away, his glance shying away from the swollen eye that is darkening around the socket. It hurts to open. Mike keeps it shut.

"I went next door to tell Desirée I was sorry," he says. It sounds too loud in the quiet room.

"Well," Pop says, and folds his newspaper over to read the other side. "Good for you, Mikey."

Mike stares at his father for a moment longer, his heart thumping so fiercely he's certain Pop can hear it. The old man doesn't look at him again.

He goes back to his room to get ready for another sick day.


End file.
